Events › Otoniya J. Okot Bitek: We, the Kindling

In Northern Uganda in the 1990s, children as young as eleven years old were kidnapped and forced into service for the Lord’s Resistance Army. In her first novel, acclaimed poet Otoniya J. Okot Bitek tells the fictional story of three survivors, all now women in their late twenties trying to live in the shadow of the suffering they endured as children.

Weaving folk tales with taut, empathetic realism, We, The Kindling is a haunting, beautiful novel that insistently refuses to spectacularize tragedy.

Otoniya will be in conversation with David Chariandy.

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Otoniya J. Okot Bitek writes poetry and fiction. Her first collection, 100 Days, won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Her second collection, A Is for Acholi, won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection of poetry, Song & Dread, is published by Talonbooks. Otoniya was born in Kenya to Ugandan parents and has lived in Canada for more than three decades. Her short story “Going Home” received a special mention in the 2004 Commonwealth Short Fiction Prize. WE, THE KINDLING is her first novel.

David Chariandy lives in Vancouver and teaches literature and creative writing in the department of English at Simon Fraser University. His first novel, Soucouyant, was nominated for the Governor General’s Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His second novel, Brother, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Toronto Book Prize. His most recent book is a memoir entitled I've Been Meaning to Tell You.